The Victory of the Cadets and the Tasks of the Workers’ Party

What is the Party of People’s Freedom?

Whatrole, then, can and must a Cadet Duma play? To answer this question, we
must first of all examine in greater detail the character of the Cadet Party
itself.

Wehave already noted the main feature of the class structure of this
party. Unconnected with any one particular class in bourgeois society, but
absolutely bourgeois in composition, character and ideals, this party is
wavering between the democratic petty bourgeoisie and the counter revolutionary
elements of the big bourgeoisie. The social basis of this party consists, first,
of the masses of the towns people, the very townspeople who eagerly built
barricades in Moscow in the famous December days; secondly, it consists of the
liberal landlords who want to come to a deal with the autocracy, through the
good offices of pro-liberal officials, for an “inoffensive” division
of power between the people and those who by the grace of God oppress the
people. This extremely broad, indefinite and inherently contradictory class
basis (which, as has been noted above,is clearly discernible in the figures regarding the Cadet electors) is reflected
with remarkable vividness in the Cadets’ programme and tactics. Their programme
is entirely bourgeois; the Cadets simply cannot conceive of a social system
other than capitalism, beyond which even their boldest suggestions do not
go. In politics, their programme combines democracy, “people’s
freedom”, with counter-revolution, with the freedom of the autocracy to
oppress the people; and it combines them with particularly petty-bourgeois and
professorial-pedantic scrupulousness. The Cadet’s ideal is that power in the
state should be divided into approximately three parts. One part goes to the
autocracy. The monarchy remains. The monarch retains equal power with the
popular representative body, which is to “agree” with him on the
laws to be passed, and submit itsbillsto him forapproval.The second part goes to the landlords and the big capitalists. They get the
Upper Chamber, from which the “common people” are to be barred by a
two-stage electoral system and a residential qualification. Lastly, the third
part goes to the people, who get a Lower Chamber elected on the basis of
universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot. Why fight, why this
internecine strife? wails Judas Cadet,[2]lifting up his eyes and
reproachfully glancing, now towards the revolutionary people, now towards the
counter-revolutionary government. Brothers! Love one another! Let the wolves
have their fill without any harm to the sheep, let the monarchy with its Up per
Chamber be inviolate and “people’s freedom” as sured.

Thehypocrisy underlying these Cadet principles is most glaring, and the
fallacies of the “scientific” (professorially-scientific) arguments
with which they are defended are amazing. It would be a great mistake, of
course, to attribute this hypocrisy and these fallacies to the personal
qualities of the Cadet leaders, or of individual Cadets. Such a vulgar
explanation, which our opponents often attribute to us, is repugnant to
Marxism. Undoubtedly, there are many most sincere Cadets who really believe that
their party stands for “people’s freedom”. But the dual and
vacillating class basis of their party inevitably engenders their double faced
policy, their fallacies, and their hypocrisy.

Theseamiable features stand out even more clearly, perhaps, in the Cadets’
      tactics than in their programme.Polyarnaya
      Zvezda,[3]in which Mr. Struve has so sedulously and successfully merged
    Cadetism withNovoye Vremya-ism, has given us an excellent,
    magnificent and inimitable example of Cadet tactics. At the moment when the
    firing in Moscow was subsiding, and when the military and police
    dictatorship was indulging in its savage orgies, when repressions and mass
    torture were raging all over Russia,Polyarnaya Zvezdaprotested
    against the use of force by the Lefts, and against the strike committees
    organised by the revolutionary parties. The Cadet professors who are
    trading in their science for the benefit of the Dubasovs went to the length
    (like Mr. Kiesewetter, member of the Central Commit tee of the Cadet Party
    and candidate for the Duma) of translating the word
    “dictatorship” by the words “reinforced security”! These
    “men of science” even distorted their high-school Latin in
    order to discredit the revolutionary struggle. Please note once and for all,
    Messrs. Kiesewetter, Struve, Izgoyev and Co., that dictatorship means
    unlimited power based on force, and not on law. In civil war, any victorious
    power can only be a dictatorship. The point is, however, that there is the
    dictatorship of a minority over the majority, the dictatorship of a handful
    of police officials over the people; and there is the dictatorship of the
    overwhelming majority of the people over a handful of tyrants, robbers and
    usurpers of people’s power. By their vulgar distortion of the scientific
    concept “dictatorship”, by their out cries against the violence
    of the Left at a time when the Right are resorting to the most lawless and
    outrageous violence, the Cadet gentlemen have given striking evidence of the
    position the “compromisers” take in the intense revolutionary
    struggle. When the struggle flares up, the “compromiser”
    cravenly runs for cover. When the revolutionary people are victorious
    (October 17), the “compromiser” creeps out of his hiding-place,
    boastfully preens himself, shouting and raving until he is hoarse:
    “That was a ’glorious’ political strike!” But when victory goes to the
    counter-revolution, the compromiser begins to heap hypocritical
    admonitions and edifying counsel on the vanquished. The successful strike was
    “glorious”. The defeated strikes werecriminal, mad, senseless, and anarchistic. The defeated
insurrection was folly, a riot of surging elements, barbarity and stupidity. In
short, his political conscience and political wisdom prompt the
“compromiser” to cringe be fore the side that for the moment is
strongest, to get in the way of the combatants, hindering first one side and
then the other, to tone down the struggle and to blunt the revolutionary
consciousness of the people who are waging a desperate struggle for freedom.

Thepeasants are fighting against landlordism, and this struggle is now reaching
its climax. It has become so acute that the issue is put squarely: the landlords
are demanding machine-guns in reply to the slightest attempt of the peas ants to
seize the land that the nobles have been grabbing for centuries. The peasants
want to take all the land. If they attempt it,Polyarnaya Zvezda, with
an unctuous excuse, will send the Kaufmans into the field to prove that the land
lords haven’t very much land: that, strictly speaking, it is not the land that
is the cause of the trouble, and that every thing can be settled peacefully.

Theresolution on tactics adopted by the last Cadet congress[4]very well sums up the Cadets’ political chicanery. After the December uprising, when
it had become perfectly obvious to everybody that the peaceful strike was
obsolete, that it had spent itself and become useless as an in dependent weapon in
the struggle, the Cadet congress came along with a resolution (proposed, I
think, by Mr. Vinaver) which recognised thepeacefulpolitical strike
as a weapon in the struggle!

Thisis magnificent, matchless, Cadet gentlemen. You have assimilated the spirit
and meaning of bourgeois political chicanery with inimitable facility. The
bourgeoisie must seek the support of the people; without it, it will never
achieve power, and has never done so. But at the same time it must restrain the
revolutionary onslaught of the people to prevent the workers and peasants from
winning— God forbid—complete and consistent democracy, genuine, and
not monarchist and “two-Chamber”, freedom for the people. That is
why it must throw a spoke in the wheel of the revolution every time it is
winning. And for this purpose every means, every device, must be
brought into play—fromthe “scientific” distortion of Latin by “professors” to
      discredit the very idea of the people achieving a decisive victory, to,
      say, recognising only such weapons in the revolutionary struggle as arealreadyobsolete at the time when you recognise them! This is both
    harmless and advantageous. Harmless, because blunted weapons obviously
    cannot bring the people victory, will not put the proletariat and the
    peasantry in power; at best, they will shake the autocracy a little and help
    the Cadets to bargain for an extra bit of “rights” for the
    bourgeoisie. It is advantageous because on the surface it creates the
    impression that the Cadets are “revolutionary”, that they
    sympathise with the people’s struggle, and this wins them the support of
    large numbers who sincerely and earnestly want the revolution to win.

Thevery essence of the economic condition of the petty bourgeoisie, wavering
 between capital and labour, inevitably engenders the political instability and
 duplicity of the Cadet Party, leads to the latter’s notorious
 “arrangement” theory (“the people have rights, but it is the
 prerogative of the monarch to sanction these rights”) and converts it into a
 party of constitutional illusions. The ideologist of the petty, bourgeoisie
 cannot grasp the “essence of the constitution”. The petty bourgeois
 is always inclined to take a scrap of paper for the essence of the thing. He is
 ill-fitted for independent organisation—that is, independent of the
 militant class—for the direct revolutionary struggle. Being the most
 far-removed from the most acute economic struggle of our epoch, he prefers, in
 politics as well, to yield first place to other classes when it comes to really
 winning a constitution, to actually achieving a genuine constitution. Let the
 proletariat fight for the constitutional ground, and on this constitutional
 ground, so long as it holds, even on the corpses of workers killed during the
 insurrection, let the toy-business mannikins[5]play at
 parliamentarism— such is the immanent tendency of the bourgeoisie. And
 the Cadet Party, this refined, ennobled, sublimated, perfumed, idealised, and
 sweetened incarnation of general bourgeois aspirations, is working on these
 lines with wonderful consistency.

Youcall yourselves the party of people’s freedom? Don’t give us that! You are a
party of philistine betrayers ofpeople’s freedom, a party of philistine illusions about people’s freedom. You
are a party of freedom—in that you want to subject freedom to a monarch
and a landlord Upper Chamber. You are a party of the people—in that you
dread the victory of the people, that is, the complete victory of a peasant
revolt, of the workers’ struggle for the cause of labour. You are a party of the
struggle—in that every time a real, direct, immediate revolutionary
struggle against the autocracy flares up, you take refuge behind unctuous,
professorial excuses. You are a party of words, not of deeds; a party of
promises, not of fulfilment; a party of constitutional illusions, not a party
for an earnest struggle for a real (not merely a paper) constitution.

Whena lull sets in after a desperate battle; when up above “the sated
beast, the victor, lies

			      a-weary”,[1]and down below the people are
“sharpening their swords” and gathering fresh strength; when slowly
the ferment is beginning to bubble and seethe among the masses again, when a
new political crisis and a new great battle are only in the making—then
the party of philistine illusions about people’s freedom reaches the culminating
point of its development and exults over its victories. The sated beast feels
too languid to pounce once more upon the liberal talkers (there’s no hurry;
it can wait!); for the champions of the working class and the peasantry, the
time has not yet come for another upheaval. This is just the golden
opportunity; this is the time to gather the votes of all the discontented (and
who is contented nowadays?); this is the time for our Cadets to sing
full-throated, like any nightingale.

TheCadets are the worms in the grave of the revolution. The revolution lies
buried. It is being eaten by worms. But revolution has the power of speedy
resurrection and of blossoming forth again on well-prepared soil. The soil has
beenwonderfully, magnificently prepared by the October days of freedom and by the
      December uprising; but we would not for a moment deny that the worms, too,
      are doing useful work while the revolution lies buried. Why, these fat
      worms manure the soil so well....

Mr.Struve once exclaimed inPolyarnaya Zvezda:“The peasant in
the Duma will be a Cadet!” Very likely. The bulk of the peasants are, of course,
in favour of freedom for the people. They will hear these fine, lofty words,
they will see the police officials, face-smashing policemen, and feudal-minded
landlords dressed up in all sorts of “Octobrist” costumes: and, of
course, they will be on the side of freedom for the people, they will be
attracted by the beautifully coloured labels, they will not see through this
philistine deception all at once. They will become Cadets— and remain
Cadets until the course of events shows them that the people’s freedom hasstillto be won, that the real fight for freedom for the people has
still to be foughtoutsidethe Duma. And then—then the peasants
as well as the bulk of the town petty bourgeoisie will split: a small but
economically powerful kulak minority may this time definitely side with the
counter-revolution, another section will go over to the side of
“compromise”, of “reconciliation”, of an amicable deal
with the monarchy and the landlords; and a third section will side with the
revolution.

InDecember, during the great struggle, the townspeople built barricades. In
March, when the insurrection is sup pressed, they protest against the government
by voting for the Cadets. When their present constitutional illusions are
dispelled, they will leave the Cadets and go over to the revolution again. How
many of the townspeople abandon Cadet word-spinning for revolutionary struggle,
how many of the peasantry join them, how vigorously, how well-organised, how
successfully the proletariat goes forward in the next onslaught, will determine
the outcome of the revolution.

TheCadet Party is an ephemeral, lifeless party. This may sound paradoxical at a
time when the Cadets are achieving brilliant election victories, and will
probably achieve still more brilliant “parliamentary” victories in
the Duma. But Marxism teaches us to examine all phenomena in theirprocess of development, and not to be content merely with superficial
descriptions; not to believe in pretty labels, but to investigate the economic,
class basis of parties; to study the objective political situations which will
determine the significance and outcome of their political activities. Apply this
method to the Cadets, and you will see that our assertion is correct. The Cadets
are not a party, but a symptom. They are not a political force, but foam
resulting from the collision of more or less equally balanced contending
forces. They do in very truth combine in themselves the swan, crab and pike of
the fable—the garrulous, boastful, smug, narrow-minded, craven bourgeois
intellectual, the counter-revolutionary landlord who wants to ransom himself
from revolution at a reasonable price, and lastly the hard, shrewd,
cheese-paring and tight-fisted petty bourgeois. This party neither desires, nor
is it able, to rule at all firmly in bourgeois society; it neither desires, nor
is it able, to lead the bourgeois-democratic revolution along anything like a
definite path. The Cadets have no desire to rule; they prefer to
“belong” under a monarchy and an Upper Chamber. They cannot rule,
because the real masters of bourgeois society, the Shipovs and Guchkovs, the
representatives of big capital and big property, hold aloof from this party. The
Cadets are a party of dreamers about a nice white, clean, orderly,
“ideal” bourgeois society. The Guchkovs and Shipovs are the party
of real, genuine, grimy capital in modern bourgeois society. The Cadets cannot
lead the revolution forward, because they lack the backing of a united and
really revolutionary class. They dread the revolution. They rally everybody, the
whole “people”, only on the basis of constitutional illusions and
unite them only with a negative bond: hatred for the sated beast, for the
autocratic government, in opposition to which, on the present
“legal” basis, the Cadets aremore to the left than anybody
else.

Thehistorical role of the Cadets is a transient, fleeting one. They will fall
together with the inevitable and speedy fall of constitutional illusions; they
will fall like the French Social-Democrats of the late 1840s, who very much
resembled our Cadets, and were also petty-bourgeois. The Cadets will fall, after
preparing the soil—either for a prolonged triumphof the Shipovs and Guchkovs, for a prolonged burial of the revolution, for
      “serious” bourgeois constitutionalism, or for the
      revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the
      peasantry.

[1]Skitalets,“Silence Reigns”.“The strings are broken; song, be silent
now! All we had to say we said before the fray. The dragon, dying monster,
has come to life again; the clash of swords has drowned the thrum of
strings.... Silence reigns; the familiar sounds of life are stilled in this
gruesome night. The vanquished, down below, are sharpening their swords;
above, the victor lies a-weary. The sated beast is old and feeble. There,
down below, he sees something new a-foot; the old door is trembling and
shaking; the giant is breaking his chains.”—Lenin

[2]JudasGolovlyov—a sanctimonious, hypocritical serf-owner
described in M. Saltykov-Shchedrin’sThe Golovlyov Family.

[3]PolyarnayaZvezda(The Pole Star)—a weekly
magazine of the
Right wing of the Cadet Party, published in St. Petersburg in
1905-06 and edited by P. B. Struve. In April and May 1906, the
Cadets publishedSvoboda i Kultura (Freedom and Culture)
instead ofPolyarnaya Zvezda.

[4]TheSecond Congress of the Constitutional-Democratic
(Cadet) Partytook place in St. Petersburg on January 5-11 (18-24),
1906. On the issue of Party tactics, the Congress resolved to approve “as
a declaration of the Party” the report which M. M. Vinaver delivered to
the Congress on January 11 (24). The fundamental thesis of the declaration was
recognition of the political strike as a peaceful means of fighting against the
government. The declaration said that the Party considered the chief field of
its activity to be “an organised representative assembly”, that is,
the Duma. The Congress virtually took a stand for a deal with the government.

[5]Thereference is to the puppets in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s
tale of that name. Izuverov, the skilful craftsman who made them, said:
“They have no wits or deeds or desires. All they have instead is
a semblance.”